AFA Holds Industry Wide Bargaining Summit
May 14, 2023 — Bargaining is happening across our industry. Negotiating committees and or MEC officers (if negotiations are not currently taking place), along with the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), met in Chicago this week to strategize in order to make the most of this moment for Labor to improve our jobs.
Flight Attendants at Alaska, Air Wisconsin, ATI, Avelo, Omni, United, and American are currently in Section 6 negotiations. Flight pay is always a top issue – but especially following the volatility of COVID, Flight Attendants across the industry are prioritizing quality of life, work rules, and pay for all of our time at work.
Key to the discussion was the right to strike underpinning real collective bargaining. It's the only way to exert power to match management at the table and get the contracts we want to ratify. Watch this video of a striker in the current Writer's Guild of America strike in Hollywood and across the country >
This year we have a lot of opportunities to use our leverage and we have to be ready. We were joined during the summit by Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien who stepped out of UPS bargaining to talk about what we can fight for and win together. “The concession stand is closed,” O’Brien said. Negotiations are underway at UPS for a contract that covers more workers than any other single contract in the country. Roughly 360,000 workers have the same issues we have as Flight Attendants: ending two-tiered employment, affordable healthcare, a living wage, a secure retirement, the protection of sick leave, control of our time and schedules, and hot trucks (or planes) just to name a few. The Teamsters have a strike deadline of August 1 if an agreement is not reached. We'll keep AFA members up to date on these negotiations and how we can support them as they set the tone for union members and the entire working class across the country.
Following the summit, our union joined United ALPA pilots picketing at ORD for a new contract. Solidarity, strategy, and credible strike threats will lead us to success! Wear your AFA pin every time you fly, and join a picket line near you. No matter who is on strike, when the corporate class (and the hedge funds who control them) sees us standing together we have more power at our individual negotiating tables.
